Advances in medicine and health care allow people to live longer and more productive lives. As people age, they require medications for many reasons, including to remain healthy, and in some instances, to remain alive. Advances in medicine also allow people to enjoy conveniences and comforts not otherwise available (e.g., cold remedies, allergy medications, etc.).
Pharmacies, including those in hospitals, nursing homes, and the like, must dispense multiple medications to multiple patients on ever-changing schedules. Ensuring that each patient receives the correct medication at all times presents significant logistical problems to those responsible for prescribing, dispensing, and administering the medications. Even when everything in the dispensing system works properly, the logistics and paperwork required to dispense all medications to multiple patients correctly can be very time-consuming, labor-intensive, and expensive.
The “human factor” in the supply system can also become a source of error. Unfortunately, at times, the wrong medications to be dispensed to a patient. This may occur for many reasons, including insufficient time, excessive workload, and the like. The potentially harmful consequences of incorrectly dispensing medications to patients requires no elaboration.
As more and more medications are prescribed to patients, pharmaceutical companies and drug distributors increasingly rely on “blister-packed” drugs. Blister packaging for pharmaceutical products, sometimes also referred to as “bubble packaging” or “push through packaging,” is a type of packaging in which individual pills (tablets, capsules, caplets, etc.) are contained within discrete locations on a plastic, cardboard, or foil card. Often, pills are stored within discrete, pre-formed indentations on a plastic card, and the pills are sealed within those indentations by affixing a thin covering sheet of paper, plastic, or foil over the indentations. Pills can be dispensed from the blister package one at a time by pushing the pill through the covering sheet.
The convenience and security of blister-packed drugs has influenced the use of blister packaging for many non-drug items, as well. A blister-packed item is verified at the time of packaging to contain the correct item and the correct number of items. Additionally, the blister packaging can be shaped and sized to deter theft of the packaged item, by making theft cumbersome and inconvenient.
Prescriptions and non-drug product orders fulfilled using blister-packed items benefit from fewer human-based errors. However, dispensing of even blister-packed items is subject to errors of human intervention, such as selection of the incorrect blister pack. The art lacks an efficient or convenient way to automate the selection and distribution of blister-packaged items. Known systems and apparatuses are not amenable to the storage and distribution of blister-packaged pharmaceuticals. Known systems can accommodate and handle items having a regular and/or defined size and shape. The irregular and varied shapes and sizes of blister-packaged products renders them unusable with known apparatuses.
In order to further minimize errors in the dispensation of drugs contained in blister packs, or of any items contained in blister packs, what is needed is a way to minimize human error in the dispensation of such items. Additionally, in order to increase the speed and efficiency with which blister-packaged items are dispensed, what is needed is a way to automate the dispensation of blister-packaged items. The article dispensing system disclosed herein addresses and meets these needs.